Nature connection: Core routines

The sit spot is one of 13 core routines described in Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature. They are:

Sit spot

Story of the day

Expanding sensory awareness

Questioning and tracking

Animal forms

Wandering

Mapping

Exploring field guides

Journalling

Survival living

Minds eye imagining

Listening for bird language

Thanksgiving

Regularly practising just some of these powerful techniques will deepen your connection with nature.

Some of them look familiar: Thanksgiving, for example, is part of every spiritual path and you probably have memories of wandering or telling the story of the day if only from childhood. A few may strike you as odd: What would it mean to practise animal forms or survival living? Your tribal ancestors would be able to tell you.

The Core routines were developed by the Wilderness Awareness School under the guidance of Jon Young. Jon draws his inspiration from his childhood mentoring by tracker Tom Brown Jr., who was in turn taught by Stalking Wolf, an Apache elder.

Although Native American teaching forms the foundation of Jon’s work, he draws from ancient and modern nature connection strategies from around the world: Jon is as likely to tell a story about about the Kalahari Bushman as he is to reference ecopsychology.